What a year 2025 has already been. As you might know, I started a new facet to my career teaching high school culinary arts. The year has been fun but I’ve still got plenty to learn. Which is fine, I love learning new things and I’m looking forward to some new management strategies next year. But being with the students everyday has been completely awesome. I get to laugh everyday while helping build skills, knowledge and a love of cooking. With school ending May 29th, I’m excited to be available for parties over the summer.
Since March, I’ve been lucky enough to experience some of Americas coolest destinations. San Francisco, New Orleans, Napa, CA, and Sedona AZ; all within 2 months! I also need to give a shout out to the excellent, employees at Houston international that returned my lost wallet …with all my cash. Thank you.
All 4 trips had memorable and delicious food, but New Orleans was my favorite. I’ve been wanting to visit New Orleans for about 20 years. I remember teaching a cooking class with beignets and in researching the recipe, I came across Martha Stewart talking about her experience at Cafe Du Monde and the Cafe au lait/chicory coffee. For some reason that weevilled deep into my head and I’ve been wanting to taste that coffee ever since. Why didn’t I just order it online and make it myself? Wonderful question… I wanted to wait and try the version that made it famous. Although it was interesting, memorable, different and delicious, I’ll take my normal plain black coffee any day :-)
Muffuletta, boudin, and grilled oysters were not all we ate, but they were the outstanding highlights. Yes, I’ve had these dishes before…but all three of those were on an ethereal plane not common in other cities. Especially the grilled oysters from Drago’s; like…whoa.
